What if?
by s2lou
Summary: In The Interval: It wasn't so much the separation in itself that tore them away now, but rather the six years that had passed unbeknownst, in the interval.
1. Omiai serenade

**Author's note: The whole plot for those fics comes from a song by Lene Marlin ("What if") which will, consequently, appear in this. In short it's this: an undetermined number of oneshots about Heiji and Kazuha – 'cause that's the couple I find most difficult to write about – if… a lambda thing happened. That one's about an o-mïai. Hope you'll enjoy reading it…**

**-**

This, Heiji thought as Kazuha opened the door and appeared in a red yukata, was something he'd never expected to happen.

Of course, his well-trained mind, immediately, mechanically, began tracing the probabilities, implications, and consequences it implied. That kind of reflection is bound to being a detective – one thought in alibis and motives, in times and locations, in suspects and culprits.

But here, he reflected gloomily, who's the culprit?

Kazuha had greeted him, let him in, and sat him in one of the living room's sofas before she answered that question herself.

"You see, Heiji, my mother…"

Her mother. Well, of course, her mother. When something went wrong in Kazuha's life, it was nearly always to relate to her mother. Heiji had of all time profoundly loathed that woman who'd left her husband when chibi-Kazuha was only two, and who always came back to bring in a disaster. She had no affection, he was certain of it, for her daughter, with whom she was distant and disdainful – turned down every proposition for the two of them to spend some time together, then showed up when she was last expected and least wanted.

Obviously, she'd struck again. Kazuha was explaining, her eyes glued to the carpet, "She wants me to go to an o-mïai. But – but, I'm a bit… scared. Would you mind coming with us?"

For a moment, Heiji thought about refusing point blank. For some unknown reason, the simple idea of Kazuha going to an o-mïai was unbearable. But she looked up at him, and the anxious expression deep in her green eyes was such that he found himself nodding in agreement.

"Thank you," she said with a sigh of gratitude. "I really don't know… I mean, I know nothing about this kind of process. But if you're here, I'll be more at ease. After all–" she glanced rapidly up at him and back at the mat, "our relationship is quite near to that of a sister and brother."

This didn't make him feel any better.

Yet, before he could think of anything clever to reply, Kazuha's mother entered the room. She was a tall, slender woman who looked a lot like an ostrich. Her head was held in a high, proud manner, but she had a way of walking with her elbows close to her sides which Heiji thought ridiculous. It was a relief that her daughter had only inherited her deep green eyes from her, though less piercing and less cold.

She gazed at him with unrestrained contempt, and he gazed back with the same unrestrained contempt. Both disliked each other cordially, her because she thought him too close to her daughter, him because of her arrogant behaviour with Kazuha, himself, and the world in general.

She, however, put up no objection to his accompanying them. True, her mouth did twitch into a disdainful smirk, when Kazuha told her about the brother and sister stuff, but she said nothing apart from, "Let us go then. We'll be late."

A taxi was waiting for them outside. The older woman went in first of all, but as Heiji was holding the door for her daughter to follow, he found his other hand unexpectedly squeezed by Kazuha's. For a second, his childhood friend stared at him with vivid, expressive eyes, while her fingers were clenching tight around his, but a dry, imperative order from inside of the vehicle broke both the contact and the gaze, and they got in.

Through the whole journey, Heiji thought about the situation. Kazuha going to an o-mïai bothered him more than he thought necessary. For a long time, he'd thought nothing would ever change between them – they'd always stay high students, best friends, and so on – but, evidently, time had gone there and had faltered this agreeable illusion. That Kazuha – or even himself – should ever marry, was something he'd never thought about; but the present problem and her own odd behaviour towards the idea – more scared than reluctant, more surprised than actually struggling – wasn't what he would've expected anyway.

At length, he found relief in the fact that they were, as she'd said, as close as brother and sister, and that his worries about it were nothing more than a brother's rightful claims on his sister's security.

But they arrived at the hotel, and Kazuha went worse.

They met the other family in the great, flower-furnished hall of the building, and were immediately led to a glass-walled restaurant where the official introduction took place.

The might-be fiancé was a young man of twenty-four or twenty-five, with rather plain features and a cocky, wealthy air. Heiji disliked him instantly. As for his father, who was presenting him, he must be around forty-seven and have been handsome in his days; but he had a way of examining Kazuha as though she was a well-born mare which was absolutely unbearable.

Kazuha was declared to be an angel on earth, and Heiji was barely presented as a 'friend of my daughter'. No one, anyhow, paid attention to him. He might have been a chair.

They sat, Heiji a little set back so as to observe them all. The conversation, turning about the bursting and various qualities of 'my darling daughter', disgusted him, but didn't surprise him – what did was Kazuha's behaviour. She acted in a very civil and reserved way, where yesterday she would've shrugged and laughed at the proud, egoistical way both those men talked about their wealth and other coats of arms. She answered with cordiality to every request they ever made about her studies, hobbies, kinds of reading, and even smiled to the least funny of their surprisingly vulgar jokes.

She seemed to have caught the guy's fancy. He sat near her, presenting her cup of tea upon cup of tea and plate of biscuits upon plate of biscuits, and talked every time he addressed her with a kind of obsequious civility which ought to have her either burst out with laughter or turn away in disgust. But all she did was to thank him for his amiability and, if she sometimes looked disconcerted, rapidly recollected herself.

The parents was bending to each other and often spoke in a low voice with satisfied accents, probably enumerating the advantages of the match and making out the time when proposal and marriage could most likely be expected. Kazuha's mother would sometimes give her daughter some gratified, faintly tender looks which Heiji thought he wouldn't bear long.

He was worried and distressed by Kazuha's behaviour. He tried to extrapolate on the reasons which could lead her to act that way when, as he bent forward to seize his cup of tea, he noticed her hands. They lay on her lap among the tablecloth's folds, and were methodically tearing up her paper napkin to very small bits. There was a striking contrast between the smiling composure of her face and the nervousness, thorough anxiousness of her hidden fingers.

He thought about taking that hand in his, like herself had done not so long ago – a way to tell him something? an SOS message? – but a dark gaze from her mother forced him to lean back, with discomposed feelings.

He was now positive about _hers_, at least. The o-mïai was bothering her as much as it did him, and after a few moments' reflection, the reasons for her acting the way she did weren't so obscure. It was, as always, her mother. Kazuha had always kept a strong daughter's affection for her, which Heiji thought the elder woman did not deserve at all – she had probably been given advices, no, orders would be the right word, about manners and behaviours towards the two men, and she hadn't dared infringing them.

Heiji looked at her mother with relief and satisfaction. Her plan, finally, for a daughter's fortunate wedding, wouldn't be achieved – if she could force her to go to an o-mïai, she couldn't force her marry someone whom she disliked. This simple thought made him more comfortable, and he was now ready to bear the rest of the meeting with relative ease.

About an hour or so after it began, however, Kazuha excused herself and departed to the bathroom, so hurriedly that she didn't even notice she'd left her bag on her chair. Without paying any more attention to Heiji than before, the three others began to talk in a precipitated way about her and how beautiful, how well-bred, how intelligent she was. the conversation engrossed them so much they didn't remark how long she was staying away.

Heiji finally rose and went in search for her. It was almost fifteen minutes since she had gone when he discovered the women's restroom, fortunately empty but for her. She was leaning over the washbasins, her head bent down and hidden by her hair – she didn't seem well at all.

he'd kept at the door and was preparing to call her when she looked up into the mirror.

She was crying.

Her make-up had run down around her eyes and cheeks, tracing every tear with a line in faded red or dark blue. She raised a shivering hand and splashed some water on her face – she looked a bit refreshed then, but she was evidently distressed. She was wiping her cheekbones when, turning her head a little, she saw Heiji, who had unconsciously advanced towards her.

She said nothing and neither did he. Her tears spoke for themselves enough. Heiji hated it. He came forward and cupped her face between his hands – she did nothing to shake away, she just looked down.

For a long moment they kept like this, in complete silence. Later on, they would remark how fortunate they were that no-one had come in meanwhile – a man in the woman's bathroom, shocking! In such a classy hotel as this one, it would have caused a scandal altogether.

"All right," Heiji said at last. "Let's go."

He grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the room, into the hall.

"Let's go… where?" Kazuha stammered, stumbling after him.

"I don't know. Somewhere. Away from here."

Rain was pouring down outside. In the few minutes they lost to get hold of a taxi, they were both soaked to the bones. Yet, as they got in the car, dripping on the seats and giving the driver Heiji's address, it was as though a great, heavy, weighty burden was falling off their shoulders, fading away with every yard they put between the hotel and themselves.

The driver made no question about Kazuha's dishevelled state and neither of the two said more than three words through the whole route. Rain was going worse and worse; it was drumming against the car's windows, and, when they got out in front of Heiji's house, dropped buckets of water upon them.

It was only inside, under the entrance, once the door was shut and locked behind them, that they allowed themselves to look at each other. They then felt the awkwardness of their situation. They had run away without a previous thought about the implications of their flight, but these were now more obvious than ever. Kazuha was the most distressed. She was looking down, eluding Heiji's gaze and probably going over whatever her mother would say.

"Do you regret?" Heiji asked.

"No!" She looked up at him. "Not at all," she said decisively, as though more answering herself than him.

"I see." He turned his head away, then back at her. "You're soaked," he remarked matter-of-factly. He pointed over his shoulder at the bathroom door. "Go take a shower. I'll change and bring you dry clothes." With this he was gone, down the corridor and into his room.

Kazuha kicked off her getas and closed herself up in the bathroom, with a hazy mind. She began to undress dreamily – her kimono was so tight and drenched it clung to her skin – it was a real release to wear it off, to step into the shower and turn on hot water.

A sigh of relief left her lips when it flowed across her shoulders, down her arms, along her bare skin when it drew thin, shimmering streams before getting drowned. Everything, everyone of her worries, of her fears, of her sadness – no, maybe not her sadness – was dragged down at her feet, into the drain, and along with them the remains of her make-up, the fixing gel her mother had applied to her hair to succeed in smoothing it down. She messed it up without scruple, removed the few pins that hadn't yet fallen down, and her brown locks scattered all around on her shoulders, dripping them with the same soft, butterfly kisses-like drops that brushed against her face.

There was a knock at the door, the rustle of its opening, and Heiji's voice, "I brought a change of clothes. Put them here."

And he went out, without even some 'Do you feel better' stuff, which might have allowed them to entertain a casual conversation once _she_ got out. A condensation blurred the rather greyish glass of the shower place, and she couldn't quite see, even after wiping it off, where 'here' was, it was probably just as well.

When after an eternity she pushed the pane open and stumbled down onto the bathroom's tiled floor, her body was certainly relaxed. The heart was another matter. She interested herself in the clothes Heiji had brought.

They were some of his, and therefore way too big. The immense, white T-shirt was floating like a wave around her bust, and she had to roll up the jeans' legs. After vaguely drying her hair with a towel, and giving up tying it down, she went out.

Heiji was sitting on the living-room's couch. He wore a blue shirt and black jeans which, as she would have noticed in some other situation, really suited his dark skin. His fingers were fumbling listlessly with the radio remote, but his eyes were frowned upon a grave elsewhere – upon the whole, he looked severe and serious and worried. Worried about her, Kazuha's mind registered, but it didn't seem to mean a lot.

Her hand had trailed off on the doorframe and herself on the doorstep. Heiji, her childhood friend, her childhood love, had undoubtedly grown into a man by now. His face, the look stamped on his features, made Kazuha's heart beat faster, made her want him – to look up and come to her.

He did look up, but sat still. And she had wished it so dearly that disappointment brought back every matter of trouble she had succeeded in keeping away so far, about the o-mïai, about her mother, her own mother who's used her so abominately ill… tears began to sting at her eyes. She wiped them off, irritatingly.

"Why do you cry all by yourself," Heiji then said slowly, "when I can at least provide you with a shoulder to weep on?"

The information took just a little time to travel up to Kazuha's brain – then she was down on the couch with him, sobbing in his neck, buried in his warmth and in the circle of his arms.

"Heiji – Heiji – I…"

"I know," he murmured, running his hands through her hair with a tenderness she had never suspected in him. "Hell, no, I don't." He seemed to smile at the absurdity of his own remark, and leant back in a slow way, until he lay on in full back and Kazuha was completely drawn up onto his chest.

A long, difficult moment followed – for him, at any rate. Holding a crying Kazuha against him wasn't something he was used to do, nor he thought he ever would. And she had a way of clenching at his shoulders and nuzzling her nose into his neck which he… didn't dislike. Maybe that was the worst – that he should be thinking of such things when she was in so wretched a state.

"I suppose saying I'm sorry wouldn't help," he said at last, stroking gently the top of her head, then added firmly, "No. I'll shut my mouth."

She smiled a small smile into his shirt, but made no answer.

"I'll shut my mouth," he said, tentatively.

"No – speak," Kazuha managed to say. "At least you can – you could unburden all – this. Talk it away for me. Can't you?"

"I suppose I could," he said prudently. After a few moments he found it easier than he thought. He blurted out everything he'd kept all day, anger, surprise, concern. He talked endlessly. Kazuha listened, sometimes shivering at his animation, and wondered how, with his savage state of mind, he'd succeeded in keeping it all inside.

"This guy – those guys," he roared for the umpteenth time, "one that looked at you as a winning-prize and the other as a winning-mare – it was infuriating. What were you, a piece of meat? I mean, they didn't even _look_ at you – they had no thought for your… ideas, your concerns – you were just a, a… an object. As for your mother," but there he cut short.

He was silent. She could feel his chest raising and falling under her cheek, and his breath short in her ear. Of course she knew al too well what he was going to say. He was going to say the truth, as always.

"Kazuha, I know this is gonna hurt, I'm sorry – but you can't deny the facts. Your mother, she was – she was selling you, there's no other word. Y our own feelings towards the match held no importance – _she_ had decided so, _she_ would have her point. At least that's what she thought." He paused. Kazuha's tears had dried. Her distance towards what Heiji said was maybe not that incredible – after all he as only putting words on what she'd known for long.

"They must have noticed we're gone by now," he remarked, with relief at taking on another track. "But they can't know where we are – even your cell stayed at the hotel. They'll burst in at your place, thinking you've gone home, but here they can't track us down."

"It's easy to get lost in your words, Heiji," said Kazuha, not totally out-of-purpose. "You've got a beautiful voice, low and deep."

Any other time she would've been ashamed to say such a thing to Heiji, but not now – not now.

"It's easy to get lost," he repeated dreamily. "Damn, I'm going to cry too."

"It'd be the first time I'd see you cry," Kazuha remarked without looking up.

"Yeah. You girls are at least allowed to cry whenever you want – whenever you need. It's considered as a weakness is a guy cries."

Kazuha pondered on this. She would never love Heiji less because he cried, but she had to admit his remark held some truth in itself. "I suppose it'd depend," she said, unwilling to get involved in so absurd a discussion. But Heiji didn't follow.

"Unless, of course, there's a bug fad relying on effeminism."

Kazuha said nothing. She looked up at him, and flushed a little – crying or not, Heiji could _never_ be called effeminate. He dropped his eyes to her face as she thought so, but obviously mistook her reddened cheeks for some kind of animated amusement.

"Feeling better, aren't you?"

Kazuha came back to the surface and looked down. "A bit."

"Good." He loosened his arms a little, but his hands were still resting on her shoulders, warm. He _was _warm. Somewhat bony, but comfy, she thought drowsily, sinking in the depths of his broad shoulders, and thinking about those fingers that caressed hers…

"–bout some music?" Heiji was saying.

She remembered nodding, and the noise he made by fumbling with the remote then letting it drop from the couch to the floor. Then his hand was retrieved onto its right place, almost in the crook of her neck.

"What's that one?" she asked after listening to the first bars in silence.

"Dunno. I put on the radio," Heiji said into her hair.

They then dropped in complete silence.

_What if I don't wanna move on_

_I f I like it as it is_

_Wanna keep like this, for a while… for ever_

_Just let me lie close to you_

_Don't wanna let you go, don't wanna let you go_

_-_

_If I said I want you, if I said I need you_

_If I said I love you, what would you do_

_If I said I want you, if I said I need you_

_If I said I love you, what would you do_

_-_

_What if I don't wanna forget_

_Don't want anyone but you_

_Believe me, it's true, for a while… forever_

_Just let me stay here with you_

_I don't wanna leave, I don't wanna leave_

_-_

_If I said I want you, if I said I need you_

_If I said I love you, what would you do_

_If I said I want you, if I said I need you_

_If I said I love you, what would you do_

_-_

_And I thought I could, let this go_

_I thought I would, but now I know_

_Now I know_

_-_

_If I said I want you, if I said I need you_

_If I said I love you, what would you do_

_If I said I want you, if I said I need you_

_If I said I love you, what would you do_

_-_

This expressed Kazuha's present state of mind so well that she unwittingly looked up at Heiji, anxious to know how _his_ feelings were affected.

He was asleep.

He was asleep! He looked calm and relaxed and peaceful, and he hadn't listened to a word of the song.

"Oh, _damnit_," Kazuha hissed, and frowned at his sleeping face. "Ahou", she between-her-teeth'ed, and lied down again. He made a good pillow, all right. And his arm around her was a sufficient cover. She was beginning to doze off.

"If only," she whispered, "we _could_ stay like this forever."

"We could," Heiji said with his eyes still closed.

She thought about blushing. But – really – what use could that be. He'd heard her. Oh, well. She was dozing off, dozing off in his arms.

-

_If I said I want you, if I said I need you_

_If I said I love you, what would you do…_

-

When Heizo and Shizuka Hattori came back late that night from the party where they'd gone, they were exhausted. Not so much by what they'd found out there, but rather by the incessant phone calls Kazuha's mother had drowned them under all evening, requiring to know where her daughter was.

They'd answered every time, more and more wearily, that they had no idea about it, and why should they? If Heiji had gone with her, well, why not asking the question directly to the people concerned? His phone was off. All right. They couldn't do much about that, now, could they? Have a nice evening my good lady.

Last time they were under their porch – Heizo had shut his phone at the sole sight of the number appearing on the screen. Bit inside the lights were on. And, on the living-room sofa, were Heiji and Kazuha lying, carefully entangled in each other arms, and most peacefully asleep.

Well, well. If her mother wanted to find them, she wouldn't – at least, not tonight.

-

**I have no idea why this song immediately brought up Kazuha's image to my mind. Then I thought about incorporating the o-mïai, but I wrote a very fluffy – I mean, fluffier version of this before scratching it all off and writing this instead. But I guess it's still fluffy, though…**


	2. Heart of glass

**Author's note: If I owned this, I would: 1) be freaking rich, 2) spend every on of my vacations in Hawaii, 3) write my fanfics in a much better computer than this old thing which snaps off every thirty minutes, 4) as a matter of fact, I wouldn't write fanfics at all. I would be putting my ideas down straight in the mange (in spite of the fact that I draw real, **_**real **_**bad.) If I owned DC…**

**Alas, I don't.**

**What if… he saw her with another guy.**

**-**

Heart of glass

-

Hattori Heiji had a heart of glass.

Everyone agreed upon that. And there were many reasons about it.

Unlike Kudo Shinichi or even Hakuba Saguru, he took no pity in the murderers' motives. They had killed, that was a point. They had killed and they had to pay for it. He didn't approve of death penalty, but he would show no mercy in sending them in prison. He was cold in thinking the suspects and alibis over, cold in discovering the truth hidden behind that hide-and-seek play.

He didn't care about danger. He rode his bike off to death if that was where it would take him. Accidents was things he was familiar with – even when he was katana-injured, even when there were a couple of bullets buried deep in his stomach, if he was up to something he would bring it to its end… or die, which so far wasn't something he'd experienced.

He'd been close to, though. More often than Kazuha liked.

Yeah, there was the Kazuha matter.

Surprisingly, he'd always been totally clueless about her. About her feelings. About the way she thought of him. It wasn't that he didn't care, it was that he'd never stopped to think about it.

And day after day, year after year, he kept breaking her heart, just a little more. Another crack. Another split. And her heart kept breaking, its small pieces shattering to the ground.

When she gave him a card and chocolate for the first time, he gave her a bizarre look and asked her what that was for. It wasn't his birthday or anything. It was – he checked rapidly on the calendar – the 14th of February. It wasn't like there was something peculiar about that day.

When he rode her on his bike for the first time, he felt her nails bury in his stomach. He asked her if she would loosen her grip. She was hurting him, and it was difficult to drive properly with her body so firmly pressed to his back.

When a random girl asked him out for the first time, he pushed her away with no compassion. He didn't care a penny for the tears that were running down her cheeks. He went back in his own classroom and closed the door.

When the papers asked him for the first time about Kazuha and himself, he waved a dismissing hand and said something about a bossy ahou. This ended in a fight between the two of them. But he meant what he'd said.

When she asked him to go to the cinema with her, he said yes, but he kept commenting on the silliness of the plot through the whole film. When they got out, he walked her to her house, but didn't even kiss her on the cheek before going away.

When he met Kudo, he immediately saw he and Ran were in love. Surprising that he shouldn't see how much Kazuha looked jealous when he told her first about the amazing 'Kudo'. He didn't even think she took him for a girl.

When they defeated the Black Organisation together, and they got out of the ruined building that had once been their headquarters, Kazuha ran up to him, her face worried and fearful, and he didn't even take her in his arms. He smiled at her and walked away with Kudo, who was seriously injured.

When they entered university, he didn't even feel a pang to the heart as he discovered that Kazuha and he were going to different schools. He smiled, patted her on the shoulder, and said, "Why do you look so disturbed? It's not like we would never meet again, is it?"

When he called her for the first time in months, he was surprised to find her in tears. And he certainly didn't understand why she was yelling at him like that. After all, if she wanted to hear from him, couldn't she call him first?

When she shouted at him that he'd changed his cell and hadn't even given her the new number, he found nothing to say but, 'Well, I did call you at last, didn't I?' and he had no idea why she hung up violently, with a sob.

When he dated a girl for the first time, it didn't last a week. But Kazuha saw them both in the street. His date took her for an ex-girlfriend of his and broke off.

When he dated a girl for the second time, it lasted three days. She stole his first kiss from him, and that's why _he_ broke off.

When Kazuha sent him a Valentine card and chocolate for the last time, he called her impatiently and asked her to stop. He was growing tired of this childish custom. She asked if he'd kept the omamori she'd given him so long ago. That old thing? He must have lost it somewhere.

When he found it back, lying in the dust beneath his bed, he looked irritated and began with tossing it away. Then he remembered that it had once saved Kudo's life, and pulled it back around his neck.

When Shinichi and Neechan married, he saw Kazuha for the first time in one whole year. She saw the omamori in his collar. Being slapped in a church isn't a good thing for reputation. He didn't meet her in another year after that.

When he saw her in the street with another guy, he wondered vaguely who the block was, until he saw them hug.

At that moment his brain lost track of 'when's.

It didn't mean anything, of course – it could've been a friends' hug, for all they did. It was probably a friends' hug. Kazuha wouldn't date a guy like that.

Or would she?

The old him would've gone and cut the guy to slices, for a reason he ignored. The new him just hung where he stood, staring at the two young adults in the opposite sidewalk, and didn't move, for a reason he was beginning to perceive.

They parted, the guy going one way and Kazuha another – they didn't kiss, his mind registered… they would've kissed if they were dating…

He looked at her as she strolled away in the street, her long brown hair floating lightly around her shoulders. He felt, as he watched her disappear round the nearest corner, a strange impression springing from a place close to his lungs, swelling in his throat, growing in his mouth, throbbing in his head. It was painful and sad.

Hearts of glass were cold and hard, and so easily broken.

-

**My shortest fanfic so far! And my saddest, too. Well, **_**is it**_** a sad ending? I'm not sure. You can make it out for yourselves… (shrug) and I wanted this collection of oneshots to be happy, fluffy ones allll the way… **


	3. Night Clouds

**Author's note: … who said this series was dead? No it's not! I just needed some time to… find inspiration, okay? Well, I'm on into it again – HeijiKazu fluff/angst – I guess. (and you can thank my English teacher for being absent today, because otherwise I wouldn't be writing this now.)**

**I don't-own-Detective-Conan-Gosho-Aoyama-does, et cetera, et cetera.**

**-**

**Night Clouds**

**-**

As the plane began to curve down through the night clouds towards the blinking, star-like lights of Osaka airport, Heiji's thoughts strolled back on Kazuha. He knew that the last three years had probably transformed the eighteen-years-old teenage he'd left on graduation day into a full-grown young woman, softening the childish curves of face and hips – yet it was difficult to imagine Kazuha otherwise than pony-tailed, green-eyed, and sulking at him. Seeing how their last meeting had worked out – cheek-slapping, door-slamming – he rather doubted she'd be waiting up for him at the airport.

_As if I cared,_ he thought, his eyes emptily fixed upon the approaching lights down on the ground; the sign '_Belts on'_ began to blink overhead. _Why should I bother about such an ahou…_ but still he wondered whether her jade-green eyes would still be as luminous as they used to be, if they would still hold that peculiar, furiously irritating light he had never been able to resist to.

"Sir? You have forgotten to put on your belt, sir," the stewardess' temperate voice said from the alley, two seats away, and it needed him a few seconds and an elbow in the ribs to realise she actually talking to him. He looked up at her, at the lukewarm brown of her eyes and the polite smile formally pasted on her thin lips. There was no warmth in that smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. When Kazuha smiled, it lit up the world – err, what?

"Sorry," he said, fastening the forgotten belt. Her head bowed slightly then operated a sharp turn as she strode briskly away to in down other outlaws. Heiji let out his breath and proceeded back to his gazing outside the window.

There was only a misty darkness out there now. It was deep and dark; he only understood they had been inside a cloud when they plunged out of it, and the ground appeared much closer than it was before, strewn with a million lights. He could see the black shapes of the buildings they outlined, much more distinctly, despite the wind he heard hissing around the enormous plane. The effect was striking: it was like looking down at another, smaller sky, whose boundaries were limited to that of the town. It spread widely enough, but father off, down south, he could discern the dark-grey shapes of the mountains against the black skyline.

"Your attention please," a slightly deformed voice rang out through the loud speaker, and he jerked back to the painfully luminous inside of the plane, "this is your captain speaking. We will land shortly in Osaka Airport. The temperature outside is of 17°C. It is currently 09.32 pm. We hope that you have enjoyed your trip, and will again travel with us. Do not unfasten your belt until the signal allows you to."

The '_Belts on'_ sign stopped blinking and simply stood there, illuminated. The stewardesses were skirting the alleys in one last check and Heiji's mind, once again, turned on Kazuha. He hadn't any news from her in those three years, so she was probably still mad at him. Curious, though, how he couldn't really remember the causes of their quarrel… he wondered whether she would be glad if he went and called on her. Maybe she felt just as bad about this separation as he… or maybe not.

The plane's descent sharpened as it began to turn in order to face the landing runway. Heiji felt the usual, disagreeable impression of being squeezed around the temples and swallowed absently to unplug his hissing ears, his thoughts still going over the Kazuha matter. Should he call her beforehand or take the risk of being door-slammed once more – but he dreaded too much a straightforward refusal over the phone, when she could hang up whenever it pleased her. Hell, she probably had found a boyfriend by now…

He frowned at this. She could very well date someone for all he cared, couldn't she? Yes. No problem with that.

Yet…

Yet there was something deep in his hest that squeezed at the thought, something that obviously didn't like to be thus bothered. And the unpleasant, painful impression didn't ease out as he turned his thoughts yet again onto the dark, nightly clouds that loomed threateningly over the plane as it approached the ground, as if to warn him against something he could only glimpse at.

They actually were gloomier than ever when he watched them through the saturated windows of the luggage hall, waiting for his backpack to come out amongst the other passengers'. They roamed over the back sky, dark-grey, lead-like, heavy with a rain that wouldn't pour down. Only pale, reflecting glints of silvery mist ascertained the presence of a hidden, newborn moon in the western corner of the airport's buildings.

He grabbed his bag as it strolled about on the carousel and rolled it over into the crowded waiting hall, his eyes unwillingly, almost unknowingly wondering about in the pressing throng, in search for a dark mop of hair and green eyes that would pierce through his very soul, while her voice would claim, in her usual bossy, temperamental tone, the ahou-ness of his actual living.

She was nowhere to b seen.

He spotted his dad rather quickly, however, and as he pushed his way through the room in the loud 'ka-tchunk! ka-tchunk!' of his rolling (and disfunctioning) backpack, he thought he looked rather harassed. He was leaning exhaustedly against a column and talking rapidly in his phone, his face growing more and more alarmed by the second. At last he stammered a congested good-bye, and as he snapped his cell shut, caught his son's puzzled eye.

His mouth opened right away, then closed, then closed again, then distorted itself in a failed attempt to say hello. Heiji recognised the symptoms of concern to a great extent; paling cheeks, heavy transpiration, rapid and difficult breathing – all of which totally unusual with his father's normal cold-blooded, deadpan attitude.

"What the hell's going on?" he asked, scowling; he set his backpack straight and it fell in the upward position with a bump.

"Well, the thing is…" his father began haphazardly, then adopted the straightforward and very mournful way of speaking bad news, "Kazuha had an accident on the way here."

That 'something' beating in Heiji's chest stopped functioning altogether. It had been going wild and fast a moment before, while he sought her sight in the overcrowded waiting hall, that it cut his breathing into insignificance in record time. And then happened something Heiji had already read about but never actually believed – the people around them began to fade, along with their now strangely echoing voices and walking noises; all of them were suppressed to a background blur and the only things reality left behind were his father an dazzlingly white column he was leaning against, and the backpack whose handle Heiji was clutching at so hard his knuckles had gone white.

"But she's…" his voice was so pale and toneless, so unlike himself, that he almost mistook it for somebody else's – for that of a total stranger. Then he gradually realised that the real stranger, all along, had been that unaware young man coming down from his flight, who had no idea what was going to swoop down on him.

"She's alive, - but they've no idea if she's going to make it," his father added, speaking as fast as he could, as if too avoid giving him false hopes. "She's already coded once in the ambulance and they've got to drive her all the way to the hospital…"

At that point Reality returned with a sharp blow and its whole lot of happy greetings and welcomes coming out from all parts, trunks 'ka-tchunk'-ing on the hall's tiles, melodious announcements of delayed planes. Laughing voices from all around him, while Heiji's mind was assaulted by memories of all those times he'd seen corpses, within or without a hospital; the palish cheeks and unseeing eyes, the half-parted lips, as if to retain the last escaped breath; the coldness of the skin and rigidity of the limbs – but not Kazuha, never, ever Kazuha, the shouting Kazuha, the jumping, stalking Kazuha, lively and wonderful, she could not, she would not look like that, be like that, alike to those wax mannequins, still and silent and lifeless, never, ever his Kazuha…

"What happened to her?" he felt his lips mouth with difficulty. He saw his father twitching, the slight hesitation spreading over his features, and it infuriated him like anything, making his voice grow loud and angry. "TELL ME!"

But every word his father spoke, with the voice he would have used with a young child, swept in his veins like slow, torturing poison, swiftly dragging over to the edge of the cliff, "She was stabbed. She got stabbed by a drunk man in the street."

-

The disinfectant smell. It slapped you in the face, clutched to the throat, engulfed you completely, freezing your very breath in your lungs. It assaulted Heiji as soon as he sprinted past the sliding doors, an all-breaking, nonliving scent that made him urge to throw up. His body reacted unconsciously, cutting the breathing and widening the strides up to the reception desk.

Yet he had no time to address the receptionist (whose indifferent gaze reminded him disagreeably of the stewardess' cold attitude, back in the plane – god, that felt like lifetimes ago) that a trolley surrounded by four of five medic was thrown from the chilling, nightly outside himself had just sprung out from, past the doors onto the hall in a long skidding slide. A man's hand grabbed his arm, making him wince in pain.

"Heiji-kun!" his father's colleague Toyama-san shouted with frantic alacrity, his face very close to his own. "You came!" but Heiji was not so much as listening, nor even glancing at him. One of the nurses had gone to deal with the grim-looking receptionist, and in the gap thus created between white blouse and white blouse, lying completely still on the trolley, he'd seen Kazuha.

Kazuha. She was a woman now, fully grown, but she was still, so still, she was white, so white… her scattered hair, a loose and broken ponytail, looked raven-black against her cheeks and closed eyelids. Her breathing was assisted by an oxygen mask, and beneath the thin translucent surface, slightly saturated with steam, her half parted lips were pale and imperceptibly quivering. A white-green chirurgical jacket had been flung around her naked shoulders and bust, and between the shaken sides of the unbuttoned cloth, there were bloodstained bandages applied upon her wounded flesh.

"Kazuha – Kazuha!" he blurted out, but somehow knew that she was much, much too far away, and couldn't hear him. "Kazuha…" A white-clad arm stopped him in mid-rush as the trolley began to rolled on and he tried to follow.

"Sir, I'm sorry, you can't some…"

"Let him in!" Toyama's voice thundered near his left ear and the trolley put up speed again, "he's a friend of my daughter, he's got a right to know," and they were all flung through a double door and into a dazzlingly white surgery room. Sterilized clothes and masks were shoved into their hands and by the time they'd put them on Kazuha was lying no more on the trolley (which was pulled from hand to hand and finally hit a wall in general indifference) but on the operating table, half a dozen doctor hovering over her inert body, preparing an IV pole, filling up syringes, checking the heart monitor.

The green lines, fluorescent as the blazing lights subdued and shadows stretched from the farthest corners of the operating room, were forcing their way through the dark screen, accompanied by a slow, rhythmic beating like seconds on a clock, like, Heiji thought and fear gripped at his throat, growing in his stomach and making him feel very cold, ticking her life away.

And all around her the doctors and medics were fussing with wires and instruments, more hectic than calm and composed, as they were presented to be in books and vids, and in the middle of all that mess Kazuha's complete immobility appeared irrelevant, almost surreal. They were all running around the table where she lay, pressing themselves against machines and running programs, and Heiji suddenly thought, "_They've got no idea what to do. They can't sae her. Nobody can save her."_ The urge throbbed in his mind to run to her and grab her hand, clutch at it like that contact could keep her with them, keep her on the good side of the line, keep her _alive_. He craved to see the jade of her eyes again, to hear her voice, to inhale her scent and feel her by his side, where she had always been, where she should have remained always, hadn't it been for a stupid quarrel, their mutual stubbornness, and the drunkenness of a man…

"Blood pressure?" a random doctor asked.

'Eighty over sixty," said a cold feminine voice, no doubt belonging to a cousin of the receptionist and the plane's stewardess.

"Kazuha," Toyama-san said beside Heiji, dropping himself shakily in a chair. "God, Kazuha, please hang on." His eyes were rolling like a mad man's, and the hand that gripped Heiji's wrist was slipping with sweat. "Hang on." He repeated this like a mantra, his voice breaking.

_It's no use,_ Heiji thought. _She's gone somewhere we can't reach her, and she can't hear us. It's up to her to come back. _Kazuha's body, pale and inert, could as well have been dead, had it not been for her light breathing and the slow, regular beeping of the heart monitor. _Wherever she is now,_ he thought desperately…

"Sixty over forty and dropping."

… _she's too far-away._

Then the racket was cut off into total silence by a long, high-raising whine coming from the heart monitor. The green lines had all gone flat.

For half an ever-lasting second the operating room and all those occupying it held very still. Then the sound was broken off by another siren – a buzzing, louder and clearer. _The code alarm_, Heiji thought bewilderly. _She's coding. She's had a heart attack_, and all the doctors and medics converged in a great rush toward the table – and Kazuha was hidden from their eyes.

"Okay, get me those paddles," somebody, probably a cardiologist, said. "Ready for defib? Okay. Clear." The paddles buzzed once, and the little they could see of Kazuha's body jerked then fell back, but nothing changed, neither in sound nor on the monitor's screen. "Again," said the cardiologist. "Okay. Clear." And Kazuha jolted, again, but to no effect.

The brain cells start self-destroying seconds after the heart stopped working, Heiji thought irrelevantly. And within four to six minutes after that, even if the patient's revived, he or she's got no more driving functions. Brain dead. Nothing more than a vegetable.

Brain death. Kazuha.

He felt his feet move rather than moved them himself, felt his lips open rather then opened them himself. "Try again," he said, in a voice urgent and trembling, stepping forward and pointing at the paddles on Kazuha's chest.

An arm blocked his way. "Sir, you can't, please stand back–" the nurse owning that arm said, but Heiji gripped at the table's side, refusing to back away to get any farther from Kazuha. "Try _again!_" he shouted frantically. He was leaning over Kazuha's head now, and had a full view of her white face and closed eyes, her pale lips parted into one last, lost breath. He wanted to kiss them, insufflate life through them.

"Again. All right. Clear," the cardiologist said, and Kazuha's bust jerked again, but to no avail. Heiji felt tears sting at his eyes. Everything was so cold suddenly… How much time since the code alarm had gone wild? One minute? Two? Seconds seemed both so long and so short together. And even if they could revive her, would she ever regain full consciousness, or would the brain be too damaged already?

"She's gone," somebody said, and Heiji shouted, "No! Try again!"

"Sir…" a hand laid on his forearm in a father-brushing touch, as if its owner – he couldn't say who – feared that he might go into an epileptic fit. "Sir, I'm sorry, I'm afraid we're too late…" He shrugged the hand away.

"AGAIN!" he insisted, and felt something wet cascading down his cheeks.

"Okay. Ready," the cardiologist said, but Heiji barely heard him, he was focusing on Kazuha, on her pale face, on the hand he was grabbing. "Clear." Kazuha's body jerked again, and Heiji thought, _It's no use. She's gone. We've lost her. I've lost her._

… until she coughed.

And from behind Heiji, at the moment his fingers began to uncurl from around hers, from the heart monitor till then obtrusively, desperately silent, came a slow, weak, irregular beating, but it was a _beating_, and as a nurse rushed forward for a cardiac massage it grew firmer and firmer; Heiji was shoved out of the way as he stared unbelievingly at the green lines on the black screen, no more flat but spiked, throbbing with life.

"She's back!" somebody cheered, and Heiji backed against a crash cart, drying the tears that kept pouring down his cheeks. Someone – maybe the same person who'd just shouted, he couldn't be sure, grabbed his shoulders and shook them, saying, "We got her back, sir! Now please stand back!"

Heiji nodded absently and obeyed, his heart still full of the same uncertainty and refusal to believe, now, that she was saved, as it had been full of refusal to believe she was gone. He strode back to the corner where Toyama-san stood, thunder-struck, with in his eyes the same mad glint that, he thought, could probably be seen in his own. At last comprehending that his daughter was no more in death danger, the elder man sunk back in his chair, shivering all over, his face in his hands.

Heiji didn't imitate him. Now, curiously, he was very calm. He patted his companion's shoulder and looked back at Kazuha, who was coughing again, sucking for air, yearning for life. Her body was no longer inert, but moving and gasping, struggling for its own mobility – and she was back, and she was alive, and she was safe.

-

"_No… Noooo!"_

_Kazuha screamed, and the man laughed – a drunken laugh, heavy and difficult, intoxicated with itself – and the blade plunged again, in a flash of silver. She felt it pierce through the cloth of her light jacket and shirt, through her skin, through her flesh – and pain flowed in, acute, unbearable, as the knife drew back and in again, stabbing her for the third time. She screamed again, her consciousness gushing away with the blood she was losing, tearing down her quivering fingers._

_Her head hit the cobbles, vision was beginning to blur. Somehow – maybe she was only imagining it – she thought she heard hasty footsteps hurrying closer and a shouting voice; thought she felt her aggressor swear then leave her side, but at that moment conscious thought deserted her and an she sunk into a darkness of painful remembrances and silvery flashes of relentless blades…_

"_No," she moaned._

"No…"

"Kazuha," a deep voice called gently, and she opened her eyes to quietness, walls a dazzling white and hand squeezing her own. Somewhere out of sight to her left came a slow, regular beeping from some kind of machine; her bare arm laid on the covers of the comfortable bed where she lay, she felt its softness tickle against her skin. From there her eyes slid to her hand, then, focusing blurringly, to the tall, dark-skinned young man sitting on the bed near her stretched legs and pressing her fingers in his own.

"Hei… ji?" her lips moved – it seemed – of their own accord. The sight of him was just too surprising, totally different from the last thing she consciously remembered – a memory whose last echoes still lingered achingly in the borders of her mind, with flashes of silvery pain.

He nodded curtly, silencing her with his free hand. Making sure she kept absolutely silent, still exerting the same pressure around her hand, he reached out for a bedside table water jug, saying, "Lay _still_. The doctors said you should drink as soon as you'd woken up–" To pick up a paper goblet he had he avoid a long thin tube falling from the above, and Kazuha realised it was an IV connected to her uncovered arm, feeding her, sustaining her.

"What happ–"

"Drink." He approached the goblet to her lips and the rest of her question was drowned out in the swift, cool liquid running down her throat. It was wonderfully refreshing. Her mouth had been so dry.

While drinking she watched him as he sat on the bed, grave and silent, taking in every little detail she found changed, or missed, after his three years' absence. He looked taller than before, leaner too, maybe; there was in his eyes a glint of seriousness that spoke of manhood and maturity. No hesitation in that glance. There was something fantastic in his presence here, in her eventual ability to see him again – and he looked back without averting his gaze from her, locking his eyes with hers when three years ago he'd have turned away, or raised his eyebrows and said…

"Ahou." He said it, and that was wonderful too, hearing that voice rolling that word again, with the slight emphasis he only had ever succeeded to accentuate in order to make her feel so… "What need did you have to go and get stabbed on the evening I return?" It had been their mutual petname for one another so long – and with a mix of irritation and mirth she had profoundly missed in three years, Kazuha felt the old, marvellous anger raising up against the epithet and the bitter reply forming itself on her tongue–

"Ahou! It wasn't really a pleasure trip you know," she began to say but was cut-off in mid-sentence by the look of him. He was grave, serious; there had been no mockery in his reproach. And there was a mild quiver in his voice, which, had Kazuha been more used to hearing it, she might have identified as concern. She looked down. "… that bad, uh?"

"Well," he said, "at some point we actually thought," breaking the gaze between the two of them, "we actually thought we had lost you."

_Lost you. _It was another one of those euphemisms, of those metaphors, kindly used to avoid the shock and violence of a decease announcement. _We have lost her. He has passed away. He has gone to a better world._

_We thought we had lost you. _A subtler, more caring way to say bluntly,_ You nearly died._

Words stuck in her throat, making her feelings too confused to be expressed properly even if she'd been able to speak. So she merely squeezed his hand tighter, hoping that the mere touch of this closer contact may convey to him everything she would have wanted to say. Presently he appeared to understand perfectly; he smiled a small smile and squeezed back, intertwining his fingers with hers. His hand was warm and strong.

"What time is it?" Kazuha asked, as the thought popped up al of a sudden. There usually were clocks in hospital bedrooms, but if that was the case here it was probably placed on the wall behind her, and the gentle beeps from the heart monitor drowned out the seconds ticking by. "How long did you stay with me?"

"The best part of the night, I think," Heiji said, the thought drawing a yawn from him. He nodded at the window, whose curtains were drawn, as Kazuha saw by turning her head in her pillow. Beyond them she could see no light. "It's hardly daybreak."

"What about Dad?" She could remember, now, having for brief moments regained consciousness in what had back then felt like a thundering train station but had very probably been only the ambulance, and her father's face, distorted with fear, bent down to her, his lips moving around words she didn't hear. Everything thereafter had been darkness.

"He left your bedside sometime after midnight, when the doctors ascertained you were no longer in danger, to go reassure your mom. He said he'd be back as soon as he could, but he must have fallen asleep or something… can't blame him, poor man, he was harassed. Fear exhausted him, you know."

So it did you, Kazuha thought, looking at him and noticing for the first time his drawn-out features, the shades under his eyes and the clear messiness of the hair that expressed many a shake of the head in order to stay awake. His gestures were slow and lazy, yearning for a lost night's sleep.

"I'll call him," Heiji went on smiling that little smile that displayed loads more of his actual feelings than his usual smirks, "and tell him you've woken up. You go back to sleep. You need to make up for lost blood."

"Will you stay with me?" Kazuha asked, rather uncharitably – he already needed sleep. But she dreaded too much to find him gone by the time she was conscious again, lest it should all have been a dream. To slip into sleep with her head full of him, and to wake up seeing him gone, would be much, much worse than her nightmares.

"I will stay with you."

"Good." Kazuha closed her eyes, a delicious drowsiness already taking over her senses. Before letting herself be blown away by the restful bliss, however, she tried to form a last conscious thought into speech, and felt her lips move slowly, methodically– "I missed you."

He was silent, and yet she felt certain his hand tightened around hers, and her heart skipped a beat, though she didn't really know why. Then he spoke, in his deep, low voice. "I missed you, too."

Pause.

"I missed you a lot."

She closed her eyes again, into darkness, but this time she knew, there awaited her no more painful flashes of silvery memory, nor nightmares screaming with her own voice, but peaceful repose and dreamless sleep.

-

Heiji waited until she was sound asleep, resting comfortably among her white pillow, dark hair scattered all around her. Her half-parted lips let out a soft breathing, repetition of the slow rise and fall of her chest, and something like a very rapid smile often twitched them. He hoped she was dreaming – a reassuring, comforting dream, that would heal her wounds. The simple act of watching her sleep, in all the peacefulness and safety of the sight, was certainly healing his. Maybe it had in fact always been the fact, and it had needed him the fright of his life to realize it…

When he was absolutely sure she was fast asleep, he slowly disentangled his fingers from hers and reached for his phone, dialling her father's number. No answer. He was probably asleep, too, on the living-room couch, harassed after a monstrous night of restless fears. Heiji pocketed his cell again and strode to the window, whose curtains he pulled open.

Dawn was beginning to break free. Far to the east, a thin red line of golden light witnessed the presence of an appearing sun. The sky there was already a fadish blue, rapidly turning to white, but above the hospital buildings it was still rather dark. A stray star was still glimmering faintly, a silver pitch whose lonesome glow was slowly vanishing in the day's brighter light.

Heiji watched it in silence, stretching his stiff limbs. The sun rose at last above the skyline, rather small in the distance, drowning all shapes and shades in the same gold – and all night clouds flew away under the sudden glow, retreating to where they could no more be seen.

-

**A bit short at the end, perhaps – but if I went on like that it would inevitably result on endless fluff, alas. If you think I should write a sequel, just let me know, okay? I should be able to figure out something. Thanks for reading………**


	4. In The Interval

**Author's note: A random idea that started with the sorta prologue down there, and then began kicking me in the ribs when I was trying to concentrate on something else (class, mostly). It got larger. And then BIG. So there. Blame the muse.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own… -cries stupidly because everybody out there knew it really-**

**-**

**In The Interval**

**-**

Even now it is difficult to be quite certain as to when started the beginning of the end. The whole process was gradual, unnoticeable, unidentifiable until, once noticed and identified, it was already too late to turn around, and take back to when it had all begun to crumple down. Falling apart was, beyond all expectation, neither painful nor really sad, and the spiral which they were caught into, hurling them both in the depths of their indifference, was almost insignificant.

Maybe the origins for this extended to much farther in the past, but the first cause worth notice was Heiji's being admitted in Tokyo University along with Kudo and Neechan, and Kazuha's staying behind, keeping in Osaka. She had not wanted to leave her beloved town, and though she _was_ pained to see Heiji go away, she didn't regret her choice a second.

They did keep in touch, at least for the first two or three years. Pone calls and visits either to Tokyo or to Osaka were not uncommon. Still, slowly, those calls and visits began to space out, and the implicit complicity that used to be their usual relationship, faded away with the distance. Piece after piece, their lost contact with each other's presence; before they knew it, their meetings and conversations had reduced to formal, cordial politeness. Rapidly, when they happened to think of each other, it was with a shake of the head and that 'I really ought to call him/her' thought that is the best proof you've lost touch with one another; and so on from best friends they turned to common friends, from common friends to mere acquaintance, from mere acquaintance to total strangers.

Sometimes they would wonder where and when exactly it had all begun, what ha been the trigger, what had caused them to slip on to that indifference. They meant so much more than brother and sister not so long ago – now nothing. But the source of the Nile lay far away in the past, and they had forgotten all about it.

No one would have imagined such a simple end to their thundering relationship. No one would have figured that their long worn-out quarrels, Ahous ringing out from all parts, would one day trail off into oblivion, that their voices would stop echoing and finally die away, and the memory of those teenage times would eventually fade away in the darkness.

-

_Six years later…_

Kazuha liked her kitchen, however small it as pronounced to be. She liked the atmosphere of it in the evening, the warm glow of the ceiling lamp casting her shadow on the warm-coloured wall, the way the voice of the speaker on television came out from the other room, the sharp noise of her knife on the cutting-board.

'_Nice weather for autumn tomorrow on the south of the country…'_

She would have to buy salmon next time she went shopping; she was using what little she had left right now. And tofu – her fridge sadly lacked tofu recently. What about hayashi rice for lunch tomorrow? She could invite Minami-chan and they would have a nice little chat over it – funny how they always met in college buildings but they never had time enough to stop and share a coffee…

'–_temperatures in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka should be mild in the afternoon all week–'_

Yes, autumn had been lovely this year – no wonder after what rotten summer they'd had. There had rained only a little since the beginning of the month, and the fallen and about-to-fall leaves were a radiant red and gold. They swirled in the wind on her way to college, caressing the sidewalk with their copper-coloured flight.

The ads were on TV now – smarten your life with such and such! use such and such to make your house gleam bright! – rapidly followed by the evening news. Kazuha paid little attention to either, concentrating on the quick chopping of the salmon.

'_Blood-tainted trace of series murders leads to the arrest of the two criminals–'_

Always the same refrain, Kazuha thought, chopping on. Her father had to deal with them eight days a week. Herself had been the witness of many a crime scene – the corpse, stiff in death, the blood stains on the body and/or the murderer, the alibis, the suspects, the famous dying message… it was always the same thing.

'–_happily solved by famous detectives Kudo Shinichi and Hattori Heiji–'_

The knife held still. The journalists went on with his indifferent voice, reeling off monotonously the facts – how the murder had been committed, where the body had been found, how the two young men had conducted their investigations, the way the murderer had disguised the evidence – until, reaching the end of his text, he switched to another topic.

'British Prime Minister in visit to Japan in order to "tighten the bonds existing"–'

Kazuha let out her breath and resumed her salmon-cutting. The swift chopping noises resounded once again, dropping the speaker's voice to a whisper, and, in the small, warm, stuffy kitchen of her still flat, the peaceful routine one moment interrupted settled in back again.

-

During the following week, several things happened.

On Tuesday morning, she received among her mail an invitation to Suzuki Sonoko's twenty-fifth birthday party, Kazuha sat for quite a long moment at the living-room table, simply staring at it. She had not had any news from Sonoko-chan since they were around nineteen or twenty, but of course her twenty-fifth birthday was an occasion important enough for the Suzuki's heir to send invitations beyond her merest acquaintance. There would probably be more than five hundred guests… she laid the paper aside and stopped bothering about it.

On Wednesday morning, Kazuha bought tofu and more salmon, then, for some reason, found that she had been staring at the milk shelves for the best part of the last half hour. She shook herself out of her torpor and resumed her shopping. She attended a nice party among friends in the evening, but her head was mostly in the clouds.

On Thursday morning, she set to work at her end-of-semester thesis and did not stop working for all day, but for food and a shower. She didn't pause until nine o' clock, fixed herself a rapid supper, and went off to bed without more ado.

On Friday evening, she broke up with her current date. He was a nice guy and he really fancied her, but it didn't really mean much. Both parties separated good friends, and if maybe Kazuha felt the urge to weep over her wretched state, she didn't show a thing of it.

On Saturday afternoon, Kazuha had her hair cut – only a little higher than shoulder-length. She had had this in mind for months now, and everybody who saw her agreed that it suited her very well.

On Sunday evening, she fell back on the invitation note. Speechless, she stared unconvincingly at the formal printed words, crammed together with cold politeness and presenting the usual message, 'Suzuki-san would feel glad if you honoured her twenty-fifth birthday with your presence, etc.' Beneath it Sonoko's carelessly scribbled signature. Kazuha went to bed that night with the resolution to call them in the morning and say she couldn't come.

On Monday morning, at awakening, she wrote back that she'd be delighted to come and wish Sonoko as happy as possible, and ran down to throw the letter in the mailbox, lest she should in the interim change her mind.

-

That was the chain of events that led her, three weeks later, to be standing in one of Tokyo's largest avenues and to wonder what she should do next. The only Tokyoite she still was in real friendly terms with was Ran-chan, and in all likelihood _she_ was helping Sonoko-chan with the dealing of her party's arrangements. There was therefore no other alternative than staying in the hotel bedroom (not altogether a very happy perspective), or wandering through the town, looking for occupation.

She put the latter option into application, eating at the restaurant, shopping in downtown avenues, going to watch a movie and feeling all in all very idle and comfortable. Tokyo was wide enough to spare her places full of memories, thank God.

It was only by mid-afternoon that something came to break that peaceful schedule. Most people around were going berserk– 'he jumped right through, my dear, and they say it was _murder_–" "My _dear_! you don't say so?" "I do – and the police arrived fifteen minutes ago, they've been making investigations" quack quack quack. But Kazuha was too accustomed to murder scenes to feel more than mild curiosity.

Policemen were pushing onlookers out of the way and unrolling a long black-and-yellow plastic ribbon; she fancied she saw Megure-keibu's brown hat further into the building, and maybe Takagi-keiji running from one door to another, but she only saw his back and she couldn't be quite sure.

All of this had a relent of memory which felt rather weird, after years of abstinence. She felt interested, eager to follow the investigation like old times, but also vaguely disgusted. She consulted her watch, found that it was much later than she thought, shot a last glance at the white-covered body and rapidly pushed her way back through the pressing throng all around her.

What she didn't know was that inside the building was a dark-skinned young man who had arrived some ten minutes earlier and had immediately been greeted by a flustered Megure-keibu with these words, "Ah, Hattori-kun! Good to see you so soon! Has Takagi-kun explained all the particulars? Come, come – I'll show you the suspects."

Heiji had seen the suspects, interrogated the witnesses, inspected on location, and was now going down to take a look at the body when he caught a glimpse of green, just as he was stepping on the outside. Green eyes not even fixing themselves on him, already turning away – and before he caught glimpse at more than a retreating back and short hair swaying on blue-jacketed shoulders, the mass had already closed, howling questions at him.

Without even being quite sure why, he thought of Kazuha.

He had met with green eyes before, but none had had that same depth, that same green-ness that was so particular to Kazuha's eyes, that same intensity he had forgotten all about, and which had just pierced through his once again. But then Kazuha didn't wear her hair short, she never had, as far as he could recall – she had been born ponytailed.

He shrugged the matter away and set to work.

-

By nine o' clock the next evening, Kazuha felt for the umpteenth time that day that it had been a great mistake to have come at all. Accepting the invitation in itself had been silly, she'd known it the very night after she'd sent the letter back – she must have been very sleepy that morning, and had not much to think with.

So far, she thought, moving between groups and groups of rich industrials and spiteful heirs, the party had been pretty much what she'd expected it to be: full of pride, disdain, jealousy, not at all like a birthday party should be. Sonoko may be okay with that life but, in Kazuha's case, high heels and fancy dressing were not, had never been, and would never be her lot. She was wandering aimlessly, eating to stop worrying, watching and listening with rare interest and no enthusiasm, and getting very little amusement from all the pleasures the party was supposed to afford.

She'd expected to meet Ran-chan on her way sometime or other, but the throng was too dense. She'd been mistaken about the number of guests: she'd underestimated it very much. Looking for her friend would mean suicide – a chance meeting was all that she could hope for.

She wished she could get he hell away from here, but she really couldn't. Not before she'd congratulated Sonoko-chan for reaching twenty-five; it was a question of politeness and of personal pride. She'd come all the way down from Osaka to Tokyo only for this occasion, she would bear with it… until it wouldn't be considered too disrespectful to get away. 'Till then, she was condemned to her wandering through the crowd.

She fished a piece of sweet bread and a _flute de champagne_ from the buffet, and decided to explore. She had no idea how large the Suzuki mansion could be, not how many room it contained, but the party extended to at least a dozen. She had not, however, been through a couple of them, when Suzuki Sonoko's peculiar voice, half-shrilling and half-husky, rang out from behind her, "Kazu_ha-chan!"_

She hadn't changed much. She only wore her dyed brown hair longer. Her grin was the same as ever. She clasped her hands in hers as familiarly as though they had seen each other twice a month those last six or seven years and exclaimed, "I forgot you were to come! My, you look lovely – and how have you been? When did we last meet?" (giggles) "I MUST tell Ran-chan and Kudo-kun you're here – and Hattori-kun, too! They say it's been ages since the two of you met–" she let go of her hands and looked wildly about, ready to call the first of them who came into sight, "–so handsome he's grown–"

She turned back to Kazuha, beaming all the way up to her ears, and found she was gone.

-

**End of part one (yes – it's Sunday, so I'm sadistic). There'll only be a part two, though. And regarding the sequel to 'Black clouds', I'm working on it – occasionally. It's turning out rather difficult for some reason. It'll turn up someday or other. I suppose.**

**Ja ne, minna-san! Review if you enjoyed the read!**


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